I have a vague recollection of "er
indoors TM"
and Treacle having an argument in the small hours, but apart from that it
wasn’t a bad night. I woke a couple of minutes before the alarm was due to go
off, and over toast watched another episode of “Schitt’s Creek” before
having my usual look at the Internet.
I saw that half a dozen friends had said they were going to
next week’s funeral of the chap who used to run our old Boys Brigade group. It
will be good to catch up; such a shame it is for such a sad reason. Perhaps I
might organise a happier reunion later in the year? Before long the only time I
will be meeting friends from the old days will be at funerals… a sad thought.
Another early
shift meant for another early and dark start. Being back at Maidstone I set off
up the motorway and was delighted to see that the silly and utterly unnecessary
"Operation Brock" barriers had gone, and we could drive on three lanes at the
national speed limit. However this just gave free reign to the idiot drivers.
It never fails to amaze me how stupidly some people drive when they have their
company name emblazoned all over their vehicles. One employee of ISS logistics
clearly didn't care what the motoring public thought of his company as he drove
like a cock.
As I drove (*not* like a cock!) the pundits on the
radio were talking about how some workplaces have banned talk of sporting
events in the workplace. It was suggested that talk of sport is very divisive;
the followers of the teams that won gloat at the followers of the team that
lost. The followers of the team that lost are resentful towards the followers
of the team that won. And those who couldn't care less about sport feel
excluded either way.
As someone
who couldn't care less about sport I often feel excluded...
I drove up to
the petrol station to re-fuel. I re-fuelled my car, but couldn't re-fuel
myself. Having run out of crisps at home I thought I might get some at the
petrol station, but they too had run out of crisps.
Whoever heard
of a petrol station running out of crisps?
Pausing only
briefly to deploy a Munzee (as one does) I went in to work. I had a very busy day, but an early start made for
an early finish. As I drove home through the torrential rain I was amazed to
see petrol was one pence per litre cheaper in Ashford than it had been on
Maidstone; Maidstone is usually four pence cheaper than Ashford. On the plus
side I did get Nectar points, so I wasn't entirely out of pocket on the deal.
I got home, and immediately took
the dogs for a walk. I wasn’t keen on getting wet, but the dogs insisted. We
didn’t go far and we all got soaked.
With walk done I did something I
rarely do; I downloaded a podcast. Gordon told me
that the head honcho at Geocaching dot com had been interviewed, and he felt
that this chap and I have been saying the same things recently. It only took a
few minutes to get the podcast working, and I listened to it as I pootled
about.
The chap wouldn’t use one word
when ten would do, but he said some interesting things… Based in Seattle
geocaching dot com is struggling to get IT proficient people as they are
competing with the head offices of Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and the
like. He also admitted that their IT is about fifteen years old, and that most
of their expenditure goes on administrative legal nonsense rather than their
core business. This explains a lot…
But the chap’s view on the
future of the hobby was interesting. He wants to “refresh the gameboard” and wanted rid of the older
caches that everyone has found and replace them with new ones. He said he was
worried that he hobby could face “global saturation” and he felt the game
would benefit from getting rid of the old and replacing with the new.
I was pleased to hear this last
bit; it’s no secret that for me geocaching has pretty much run its course in
that I’ve done most of the series of geo-walks that exist locally. If people
don’t get rid of the old and make new, then I’m just going to be one of many
people hanging up my GPS.
"er indoors TM" boiled up some
scran and then went bowling. I watched last night’s episode of “SAS: Who Dares Wins”
with my thoughts equally divided between “I could do that” and “you
must be joking”.
I think I would like to have done the SAS training, but I
don’t suppose it would have been much fun at the time…
